Doc suggestion: Layout of Struct traits, methods, etc. vs Module traits, etc. #37856
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cc @rust-lang/docs |
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Oh, I really like the first solution (and the visual!). A darker left menu with the struct "highlighted" this way is really great! It'd be actually very simple to do. Let's see what others think as well. |
steveklabnik
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If we're talking about rustdoc formatting tweaks, I'd be thrilled to help out with larger changes, or even test out some recommendations to get a visual of what something might look like. I'd personally love it if we included some kind of table of contents on struct and trait pages, whether it's something as small as just links to the "Fields", "Methods", "Trait implementations", etc headers; or even making the sidebar display the full list on those pages. Currently the sidebar is used to hold the "sibling" elements to whatever the page is about, though, so that one could be viewed as a change in semantics. More generally, my documentation habits come from spending a lot of time reading .NET documentation, which has condensed tables of contents like this:
Less relevant is that it also shuttles individual method/property/etc documentation into their own pages, opting instead to just display the summary line and a link on the class page itself. I'm hesitant to suggest going that far, but it at least can be approximated by the "collapse all" button, as you found out, so maybe more visibility for that would help. In any case, I'll probably start tinkering on ways to provide tables of contents, and report back some generated examples once I have a few. |
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Yeah I like part 1 as well. I agree that in general, rustdoc output could use an overhaul, but that's also a very long conversation. Part 1 seems very achievable. |
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@steveklabnik: and very easy to do! :) |
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So after a bit of tinkering, I had an initial idea of putting "header" links at the top of the sidebar so you could jump to different groups of elements.
Thoughts? |
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I don't like much like this. I really preferred when the background was darker and the current struct was with the "normal" (understand white) background color. |
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Like others in here, I'm also in favor of @johnwhelchel's first proposal in the original post for this Issue. @johnwhelchel Do you already have a branch with these changes or do you need some help implementing it? |
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Actually, as a followup I'm not entirely sure how to make changes/test this. I've got a fork of the repo on my local machine, and have successfully run |
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Also, is it possible to do it directly with CSS instead of playing with JS? Like I previously said, the less JS, the better. If you need to add a class when the menu is generated in JS, it's okay. But more than this might not be the best solution. If you have trouble to do without changing too much JS, just don't mind my comment, I'll help you when you'll open the PR anyway. Thanks for your contribution anyway! |
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I was just looking at the JS as a quick way to test that my changes were persisted by throwing in a log! I agree CSS is the way to go. I'll take a look, thanks for the advice re: make |
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I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes but this issue looked like it had been inactive for a while so I thought I would try implementing the changes. I have a branch here which implements this. Here's a few screenshots of the docs with this style change:
Should I open a pull request with these changes? |
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I like it! |
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@wesleywiser Looks great! It looks like your changes are already isolated in branch, so if opening a pull request is easy, I'd say go for it! |
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Done. Huge thanks to @johnwhelchel for the great visual design! |
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Makes the sidebar a light grey and highlights the currently viewed item in the sidebar more prominently. All visual design credit goes to @johnwhelchel (rust-lang#37856)
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…umeGomez Improve the style of the sidebar in rustdoc output Makes the sidebar a light grey and highlights the currently viewed item in the sidebar more prominently. All visual design credit goes to @johnwhelchel (rust-lang#37856) Sample screenshots:   
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…umeGomez Improve the style of the sidebar in rustdoc output Makes the sidebar a light grey and highlights the currently viewed item in the sidebar more prominently. All visual design credit goes to @johnwhelchel (rust-lang#37856) Sample screenshots:   
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…umeGomez Improve the style of the sidebar in rustdoc output Makes the sidebar a light grey and highlights the currently viewed item in the sidebar more prominently. All visual design credit goes to @johnwhelchel (rust-lang#37856) Sample screenshots:   
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Thanks to @wesleywiser for actually doing it! This had totally dropped from my mind and I had been away from Rust for a while, so I'm very glad it got done. |
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I guess we can now close this issue? |
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rustdoc: add header map to the table of contents ## Summary Add header sections to the sidebar TOC. ### Preview  * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust/std/index.html * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust-derive-builder/derive_builder/index.html ## Motivation Some pages are very wordy, like these. | crate | word count | |--|--| | [std::option](https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/option/index.html) | 2,138 | [derive_builder](https://docs.rs/derive_builder/0.13.0/derive_builder/index.html) | 2,403 | [tracing](https://docs.rs/tracing/0.1.40/tracing/index.html) | 3,912 | [regex](https://docs.rs/regex/1.10.3/regex/index.html) | 8,412 This kind of very long document is more navigable with a table of contents, like Wikipedia's or the one [GitHub recently added](https://github.blog/changelog/2021-04-13-table-of-contents-support-in-markdown-files/) for READMEs. In fact, the use case is so compelling, that it's been requested multiple times and implemented in an extension: * rust-lang#80858 * rust-lang#28056 * rust-lang#14475 * https://rust.extension.sh/#show-table-of-content (Some of these issues ask for more than this, so don’t close them.) It's also been implemented by hand in some crates, because the author really thought it was needed. Protip: for a more exhaustive list, run [`site:docs.rs table of contents`](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Adocs.rs+table+of+contents&ia=web), though some of them are false positives. * https://docs.rs/figment/0.10.14/figment/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/csv/1.3.0/csv/tutorial/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/response/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/regex-automata/0.4.5/regex_automata/index.html#table-of-contents Unfortunately for these hand-built ToCs, because they're just part of the docs, there's no consistent way to turn them off if the reader doesn't want them. It's also more complicated to ensure they stay in sync with the docs they're supposed to describe, and they don't stay with you when you scroll like Wikipedia's [does now](https://uxdesign.cc/design-notes-on-the-2023-wikipedia-redesign-d6573b9af28d). ## Guide-level explanation When writing docs for a top-level item, the first and second level of headers will be shown in an outline in the sidebar. In this context, "top level" means "not associated". This means, if you're writing very long guides or explanations, and you want it to have a table of contents in the sidebar for its headings, the ideal place to attach it is usually the *module* or *crate*, because this page has fewer other things on it (and is the ideal place to describe "cross-cutting concerns" for its child items). If you're reading documentation, and want to get rid of the table of contents, open the  Settings panel and checkmark "Hide table of contents." ## Reference-level explanation Top-level items have an outline generated. This works for potentially-malformed header trees by pairing a header with the nearest header with a higher level. For example: ```markdown ## A # B # C ## D ## E ``` A, B, and C are all siblings, and D and E are children of C. Rustdoc only presents two layers of tree, but it tracks up to the full depth of 6 while preparing it. That means that these two doc comment both generate the same outline: ```rust /// # First /// ## Second struct One; /// ## First /// ### Second struct Two; ``` ## Drawbacks The biggest drawback is adding more stuff to the sidebar. My crawl through docs.rs shows this to, surprisingly, be less of a problem than I thought. The manually-built tables of contents, and the pages with dozens of headers, usually seem to be modules or crates, not types (where extreme scrolling would become a problem, since they already have methods to deal with). The best example of a type with many headers is [vec::Vec](https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.75.0/std/vec/struct.Vec.html), which still only has five headers, not dozens like [axum::extract](https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/extract/index.html). ## Rationale and alternatives ### Why in the existing sidebar? The method links and the top-doc header links have more in common with each other than either of them do with the "In [parent module]" links, and should go together. ### Why limited to two levels? The sidebar is pretty narrow, and I don't want too much space used by indentation. Making the sidebar wider, while it has some upsides, also takes up more space on middling-sized screens or tiled WMs. ### Why not line wrap? That behaves strangely when resizing. ## Prior art ### Doc generators that have TOC for headers https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Controller.html is very close, in the sense that it also has header sections directly alongside functions and types. Another example, referenced as part of the [early sidebar discussion](rust-lang#37856) that added methods, Ruby will show a table of contents in the sidebar (for example, on the [ARGF](https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/master/ARGF.html) class). According to their changelog, [they added it in 2013](https://github.com/ruby/rdoc/blob/06137bde8ccc48cd502bc28178bcd8f2dfe37624/History.rdoc#400--2013-02-24-). Haskell seems to mix text and functions even more freely than Elixir. For example, this [Naming conventions](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.19.0.0/docs/Control-Monad.html#g:3) is plain text, and is immediately followed by functions. And the [Pandoc top level](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-3.1.11.1/docs/Text-Pandoc.html) has items split up by function, rather than by kind. Their TOC matches exactly with the contents of the page. ### Doc generators that don't have header TOC, but still have headers Elm, interestingly enough, seems to have the same setup that Rust used to have: sibling navigation between modules, and no index within a single page. [They keep Haskell's habit of named sections with machine-generated type signatures](https://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm/browser/latest/Browser-Dom), though. [PHP](https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.datetime.php), like elm, also has a right-hand sidebar with sibling navigation. However, PHP has a single page for a single method, unlike Rust's page for an entire "class." So even though these pages have headers, it's never more than ten at most. And when they have guides, those guides are also multi-page. ## Unresolved questions * Writing recommendations for anyone who wants to take advantage of this. * Right now, it does not line wrap. That might be a bad idea: a lot of these are getting truncated. * Split sidebars, which I [tried implementing](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/266220-t-rustdoc/topic/Table.20of.20contents), are not required. The TOC can be turned off, if it's really a problem. Implemented in rust-lang#120818, but needs more, separate, discussion. ## Future possibilities I would like to do a better job of distinguishing global navigation from local navigation. Rustdoc has a pretty reasonable information architecture, if only we did a better job of communicating it. This PR aims, mostly, to help doc authors help their users by writing docs that can be more effectively skimmed. But it doesn't do anything to make it easier to tell the TOC and the Module Nav apart.
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rustdoc: add header map to the table of contents ## Summary Add header sections to the sidebar TOC. ### Preview  * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust/std/index.html * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust-derive-builder/derive_builder/index.html ## Motivation Some pages are very wordy, like these. | crate | word count | |--|--| | [std::option](https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/option/index.html) | 2,138 | [derive_builder](https://docs.rs/derive_builder/0.13.0/derive_builder/index.html) | 2,403 | [tracing](https://docs.rs/tracing/0.1.40/tracing/index.html) | 3,912 | [regex](https://docs.rs/regex/1.10.3/regex/index.html) | 8,412 This kind of very long document is more navigable with a table of contents, like Wikipedia's or the one [GitHub recently added](https://github.blog/changelog/2021-04-13-table-of-contents-support-in-markdown-files/) for READMEs. In fact, the use case is so compelling, that it's been requested multiple times and implemented in an extension: * rust-lang#80858 * rust-lang#28056 * rust-lang#14475 * https://rust.extension.sh/#show-table-of-content (Some of these issues ask for more than this, so don’t close them.) It's also been implemented by hand in some crates, because the author really thought it was needed. Protip: for a more exhaustive list, run [`site:docs.rs table of contents`](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Adocs.rs+table+of+contents&ia=web), though some of them are false positives. * https://docs.rs/figment/0.10.14/figment/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/csv/1.3.0/csv/tutorial/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/response/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/regex-automata/0.4.5/regex_automata/index.html#table-of-contents Unfortunately for these hand-built ToCs, because they're just part of the docs, there's no consistent way to turn them off if the reader doesn't want them. It's also more complicated to ensure they stay in sync with the docs they're supposed to describe, and they don't stay with you when you scroll like Wikipedia's [does now](https://uxdesign.cc/design-notes-on-the-2023-wikipedia-redesign-d6573b9af28d). ## Guide-level explanation When writing docs for a top-level item, the first and second level of headers will be shown in an outline in the sidebar. In this context, "top level" means "not associated". This means, if you're writing very long guides or explanations, and you want it to have a table of contents in the sidebar for its headings, the ideal place to attach it is usually the *module* or *crate*, because this page has fewer other things on it (and is the ideal place to describe "cross-cutting concerns" for its child items). If you're reading documentation, and want to get rid of the table of contents, open the  Settings panel and checkmark "Hide table of contents." ## Reference-level explanation Top-level items have an outline generated. This works for potentially-malformed header trees by pairing a header with the nearest header with a higher level. For example: ```markdown ## A # B # C ## D ## E ``` A, B, and C are all siblings, and D and E are children of C. Rustdoc only presents two layers of tree, but it tracks up to the full depth of 6 while preparing it. That means that these two doc comment both generate the same outline: ```rust /// # First /// ## Second struct One; /// ## First /// ### Second struct Two; ``` ## Drawbacks The biggest drawback is adding more stuff to the sidebar. My crawl through docs.rs shows this to, surprisingly, be less of a problem than I thought. The manually-built tables of contents, and the pages with dozens of headers, usually seem to be modules or crates, not types (where extreme scrolling would become a problem, since they already have methods to deal with). The best example of a type with many headers is [vec::Vec](https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.75.0/std/vec/struct.Vec.html), which still only has five headers, not dozens like [axum::extract](https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/extract/index.html). ## Rationale and alternatives ### Why in the existing sidebar? The method links and the top-doc header links have more in common with each other than either of them do with the "In [parent module]" links, and should go together. ### Why limited to two levels? The sidebar is pretty narrow, and I don't want too much space used by indentation. Making the sidebar wider, while it has some upsides, also takes up more space on middling-sized screens or tiled WMs. ### Why not line wrap? That behaves strangely when resizing. ## Prior art ### Doc generators that have TOC for headers https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Controller.html is very close, in the sense that it also has header sections directly alongside functions and types. Another example, referenced as part of the [early sidebar discussion](rust-lang#37856) that added methods, Ruby will show a table of contents in the sidebar (for example, on the [ARGF](https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/master/ARGF.html) class). According to their changelog, [they added it in 2013](https://github.com/ruby/rdoc/blob/06137bde8ccc48cd502bc28178bcd8f2dfe37624/History.rdoc#400--2013-02-24-). Haskell seems to mix text and functions even more freely than Elixir. For example, this [Naming conventions](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.19.0.0/docs/Control-Monad.html#g:3) is plain text, and is immediately followed by functions. And the [Pandoc top level](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-3.1.11.1/docs/Text-Pandoc.html) has items split up by function, rather than by kind. Their TOC matches exactly with the contents of the page. ### Doc generators that don't have header TOC, but still have headers Elm, interestingly enough, seems to have the same setup that Rust used to have: sibling navigation between modules, and no index within a single page. [They keep Haskell's habit of named sections with machine-generated type signatures](https://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm/browser/latest/Browser-Dom), though. [PHP](https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.datetime.php), like elm, also has a right-hand sidebar with sibling navigation. However, PHP has a single page for a single method, unlike Rust's page for an entire "class." So even though these pages have headers, it's never more than ten at most. And when they have guides, those guides are also multi-page. ## Unresolved questions * Writing recommendations for anyone who wants to take advantage of this. * Right now, it does not line wrap. That might be a bad idea: a lot of these are getting truncated. * Split sidebars, which I [tried implementing](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/266220-t-rustdoc/topic/Table.20of.20contents), are not required. The TOC can be turned off, if it's really a problem. Implemented in rust-lang#120818, but needs more, separate, discussion. ## Future possibilities I would like to do a better job of distinguishing global navigation from local navigation. Rustdoc has a pretty reasonable information architecture, if only we did a better job of communicating it. This PR aims, mostly, to help doc authors help their users by writing docs that can be more effectively skimmed. But it doesn't do anything to make it easier to tell the TOC and the Module Nav apart.
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Rollup merge of rust-lang#120736 - notriddle:notriddle/toc, r=t-rustdoc rustdoc: add header map to the table of contents ## Summary Add header sections to the sidebar TOC. ### Preview  * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust/std/index.html * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust-derive-builder/derive_builder/index.html ## Motivation Some pages are very wordy, like these. | crate | word count | |--|--| | [std::option](https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/option/index.html) | 2,138 | [derive_builder](https://docs.rs/derive_builder/0.13.0/derive_builder/index.html) | 2,403 | [tracing](https://docs.rs/tracing/0.1.40/tracing/index.html) | 3,912 | [regex](https://docs.rs/regex/1.10.3/regex/index.html) | 8,412 This kind of very long document is more navigable with a table of contents, like Wikipedia's or the one [GitHub recently added](https://github.blog/changelog/2021-04-13-table-of-contents-support-in-markdown-files/) for READMEs. In fact, the use case is so compelling, that it's been requested multiple times and implemented in an extension: * rust-lang#80858 * rust-lang#28056 * rust-lang#14475 * https://rust.extension.sh/#show-table-of-content (Some of these issues ask for more than this, so don’t close them.) It's also been implemented by hand in some crates, because the author really thought it was needed. Protip: for a more exhaustive list, run [`site:docs.rs table of contents`](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Adocs.rs+table+of+contents&ia=web), though some of them are false positives. * https://docs.rs/figment/0.10.14/figment/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/csv/1.3.0/csv/tutorial/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/response/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/regex-automata/0.4.5/regex_automata/index.html#table-of-contents Unfortunately for these hand-built ToCs, because they're just part of the docs, there's no consistent way to turn them off if the reader doesn't want them. It's also more complicated to ensure they stay in sync with the docs they're supposed to describe, and they don't stay with you when you scroll like Wikipedia's [does now](https://uxdesign.cc/design-notes-on-the-2023-wikipedia-redesign-d6573b9af28d). ## Guide-level explanation When writing docs for a top-level item, the first and second level of headers will be shown in an outline in the sidebar. In this context, "top level" means "not associated". This means, if you're writing very long guides or explanations, and you want it to have a table of contents in the sidebar for its headings, the ideal place to attach it is usually the *module* or *crate*, because this page has fewer other things on it (and is the ideal place to describe "cross-cutting concerns" for its child items). If you're reading documentation, and want to get rid of the table of contents, open the  Settings panel and checkmark "Hide table of contents." ## Reference-level explanation Top-level items have an outline generated. This works for potentially-malformed header trees by pairing a header with the nearest header with a higher level. For example: ```markdown ## A # B # C ## D ## E ``` A, B, and C are all siblings, and D and E are children of C. Rustdoc only presents two layers of tree, but it tracks up to the full depth of 6 while preparing it. That means that these two doc comment both generate the same outline: ```rust /// # First /// ## Second struct One; /// ## First /// ### Second struct Two; ``` ## Drawbacks The biggest drawback is adding more stuff to the sidebar. My crawl through docs.rs shows this to, surprisingly, be less of a problem than I thought. The manually-built tables of contents, and the pages with dozens of headers, usually seem to be modules or crates, not types (where extreme scrolling would become a problem, since they already have methods to deal with). The best example of a type with many headers is [vec::Vec](https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.75.0/std/vec/struct.Vec.html), which still only has five headers, not dozens like [axum::extract](https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/extract/index.html). ## Rationale and alternatives ### Why in the existing sidebar? The method links and the top-doc header links have more in common with each other than either of them do with the "In [parent module]" links, and should go together. ### Why limited to two levels? The sidebar is pretty narrow, and I don't want too much space used by indentation. Making the sidebar wider, while it has some upsides, also takes up more space on middling-sized screens or tiled WMs. ### Why not line wrap? That behaves strangely when resizing. ## Prior art ### Doc generators that have TOC for headers https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Controller.html is very close, in the sense that it also has header sections directly alongside functions and types. Another example, referenced as part of the [early sidebar discussion](rust-lang#37856) that added methods, Ruby will show a table of contents in the sidebar (for example, on the [ARGF](https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/master/ARGF.html) class). According to their changelog, [they added it in 2013](https://github.com/ruby/rdoc/blob/06137bde8ccc48cd502bc28178bcd8f2dfe37624/History.rdoc#400--2013-02-24-). Haskell seems to mix text and functions even more freely than Elixir. For example, this [Naming conventions](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.19.0.0/docs/Control-Monad.html#g:3) is plain text, and is immediately followed by functions. And the [Pandoc top level](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-3.1.11.1/docs/Text-Pandoc.html) has items split up by function, rather than by kind. Their TOC matches exactly with the contents of the page. ### Doc generators that don't have header TOC, but still have headers Elm, interestingly enough, seems to have the same setup that Rust used to have: sibling navigation between modules, and no index within a single page. [They keep Haskell's habit of named sections with machine-generated type signatures](https://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm/browser/latest/Browser-Dom), though. [PHP](https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.datetime.php), like elm, also has a right-hand sidebar with sibling navigation. However, PHP has a single page for a single method, unlike Rust's page for an entire "class." So even though these pages have headers, it's never more than ten at most. And when they have guides, those guides are also multi-page. ## Unresolved questions * Writing recommendations for anyone who wants to take advantage of this. * Right now, it does not line wrap. That might be a bad idea: a lot of these are getting truncated. * Split sidebars, which I [tried implementing](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/266220-t-rustdoc/topic/Table.20of.20contents), are not required. The TOC can be turned off, if it's really a problem. Implemented in rust-lang#120818, but needs more, separate, discussion. ## Future possibilities I would like to do a better job of distinguishing global navigation from local navigation. Rustdoc has a pretty reasonable information architecture, if only we did a better job of communicating it. This PR aims, mostly, to help doc authors help their users by writing docs that can be more effectively skimmed. But it doesn't do anything to make it easier to tell the TOC and the Module Nav apart.
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rustdoc: add header map to the table of contents ## Summary Add header sections to the sidebar TOC. ### Preview  * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust/std/index.html * http://notriddle.com/rustdoc-html-demo-9/toc/rust-derive-builder/derive_builder/index.html ## Motivation Some pages are very wordy, like these. | crate | word count | |--|--| | [std::option](https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/option/index.html) | 2,138 | [derive_builder](https://docs.rs/derive_builder/0.13.0/derive_builder/index.html) | 2,403 | [tracing](https://docs.rs/tracing/0.1.40/tracing/index.html) | 3,912 | [regex](https://docs.rs/regex/1.10.3/regex/index.html) | 8,412 This kind of very long document is more navigable with a table of contents, like Wikipedia's or the one [GitHub recently added](https://github.blog/changelog/2021-04-13-table-of-contents-support-in-markdown-files/) for READMEs. In fact, the use case is so compelling, that it's been requested multiple times and implemented in an extension: * rust-lang/rust#80858 * rust-lang/rust#28056 * rust-lang/rust#14475 * https://rust.extension.sh/#show-table-of-content (Some of these issues ask for more than this, so don’t close them.) It's also been implemented by hand in some crates, because the author really thought it was needed. Protip: for a more exhaustive list, run [`site:docs.rs table of contents`](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Adocs.rs+table+of+contents&ia=web), though some of them are false positives. * https://docs.rs/figment/0.10.14/figment/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/csv/1.3.0/csv/tutorial/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/response/index.html#table-of-contents * https://docs.rs/regex-automata/0.4.5/regex_automata/index.html#table-of-contents Unfortunately for these hand-built ToCs, because they're just part of the docs, there's no consistent way to turn them off if the reader doesn't want them. It's also more complicated to ensure they stay in sync with the docs they're supposed to describe, and they don't stay with you when you scroll like Wikipedia's [does now](https://uxdesign.cc/design-notes-on-the-2023-wikipedia-redesign-d6573b9af28d). ## Guide-level explanation When writing docs for a top-level item, the first and second level of headers will be shown in an outline in the sidebar. In this context, "top level" means "not associated". This means, if you're writing very long guides or explanations, and you want it to have a table of contents in the sidebar for its headings, the ideal place to attach it is usually the *module* or *crate*, because this page has fewer other things on it (and is the ideal place to describe "cross-cutting concerns" for its child items). If you're reading documentation, and want to get rid of the table of contents, open the  Settings panel and checkmark "Hide table of contents." ## Reference-level explanation Top-level items have an outline generated. This works for potentially-malformed header trees by pairing a header with the nearest header with a higher level. For example: ```markdown ## A # B # C ## D ## E ``` A, B, and C are all siblings, and D and E are children of C. Rustdoc only presents two layers of tree, but it tracks up to the full depth of 6 while preparing it. That means that these two doc comment both generate the same outline: ```rust /// # First /// ## Second struct One; /// ## First /// ### Second struct Two; ``` ## Drawbacks The biggest drawback is adding more stuff to the sidebar. My crawl through docs.rs shows this to, surprisingly, be less of a problem than I thought. The manually-built tables of contents, and the pages with dozens of headers, usually seem to be modules or crates, not types (where extreme scrolling would become a problem, since they already have methods to deal with). The best example of a type with many headers is [vec::Vec](https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.75.0/std/vec/struct.Vec.html), which still only has five headers, not dozens like [axum::extract](https://docs.rs/axum/0.7.4/axum/extract/index.html). ## Rationale and alternatives ### Why in the existing sidebar? The method links and the top-doc header links have more in common with each other than either of them do with the "In [parent module]" links, and should go together. ### Why limited to two levels? The sidebar is pretty narrow, and I don't want too much space used by indentation. Making the sidebar wider, while it has some upsides, also takes up more space on middling-sized screens or tiled WMs. ### Why not line wrap? That behaves strangely when resizing. ## Prior art ### Doc generators that have TOC for headers https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Controller.html is very close, in the sense that it also has header sections directly alongside functions and types. Another example, referenced as part of the [early sidebar discussion](rust-lang/rust#37856) that added methods, Ruby will show a table of contents in the sidebar (for example, on the [ARGF](https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/master/ARGF.html) class). According to their changelog, [they added it in 2013](https://github.com/ruby/rdoc/blob/06137bde8ccc48cd502bc28178bcd8f2dfe37624/History.rdoc#400--2013-02-24-). Haskell seems to mix text and functions even more freely than Elixir. For example, this [Naming conventions](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.19.0.0/docs/Control-Monad.html#g:3) is plain text, and is immediately followed by functions. And the [Pandoc top level](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-3.1.11.1/docs/Text-Pandoc.html) has items split up by function, rather than by kind. Their TOC matches exactly with the contents of the page. ### Doc generators that don't have header TOC, but still have headers Elm, interestingly enough, seems to have the same setup that Rust used to have: sibling navigation between modules, and no index within a single page. [They keep Haskell's habit of named sections with machine-generated type signatures](https://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm/browser/latest/Browser-Dom), though. [PHP](https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.datetime.php), like elm, also has a right-hand sidebar with sibling navigation. However, PHP has a single page for a single method, unlike Rust's page for an entire "class." So even though these pages have headers, it's never more than ten at most. And when they have guides, those guides are also multi-page. ## Unresolved questions * Writing recommendations for anyone who wants to take advantage of this. * Right now, it does not line wrap. That might be a bad idea: a lot of these are getting truncated. * Split sidebars, which I [tried implementing](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/266220-t-rustdoc/topic/Table.20of.20contents), are not required. The TOC can be turned off, if it's really a problem. Implemented in rust-lang/rust#120818, but needs more, separate, discussion. ## Future possibilities I would like to do a better job of distinguishing global navigation from local navigation. Rustdoc has a pretty reasonable information architecture, if only we did a better job of communicating it. This PR aims, mostly, to help doc authors help their users by writing docs that can be more effectively skimmed. But it doesn't do anything to make it easier to tell the TOC and the Module Nav apart.
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Doc Design Issue Thoughts
I've been looking into Rust a lot more lately after two false starts over the past couple of years, so I think I fit the pattern for a lot of people who are interested but are struggling to get over the hump of grokking Rust. One thing I've noticed and had "click" for me about the documentation that I find confusing is the difference between what's in the sidebar, and the user is actually searching for looking at. As an example, today I googled for the 'rust String doc' and was taken to this page.
I only just realized that everything on the left doesn't relate to the struct String at all. It relates to it's parent module std::string. If I want to see a list of functions String implements, I have to either scroll through the entire page, or hit the minus button in the upper right and scroll (which has pretty low discoverability, I only found out about it when trawling though an old thread on /r/rust. Perhaps it could be just the word "collapse" or "collapse all"? Digression, not what this issue is for).
If I want to see at a glance what traits are impl'd by String, this information also requires scrolling, and is interspersed by the actual methods on the trait themselves, so you can't see them all at once.
I would love to have the information for the Struct/Trait at hand more readily available for quick digestion, rather than that of its parent module. If I were looking at std::string, I would expect the information on the left of what you see in the linked image above to be front and center. And ta-da, it is ( after shrinking, while std is to the left, less distracting but there).
I suppose the idea of the current documentation is to mimic a sort of a hierarchical browser, and I do get it now. I just want to share that it was a source of confusion for me, where I would go to String docs, click on the Trait "ToString" to the left (a totally reasonable Trait to expect string to implement for itself in someway, just return itself), get confused about where I was and hit the back button. This would happen all the time. Now, looking back, I wonder how I couldn't understand, and so you all may think it's obvious as well, but I kept using the docs in a confusing fashion for a long time...
Additionally, c.f Ruby docs (which aren't that great really...) for which the left sidebar is not about the parent, but the current class
or Java, which has the same issue but makes it more clear via separation, and presents at the top all of the implemented interfaces/subclasses, before diving into the weeds further below.
Proposed solution
I prefer the first of those two suggestions, if only because a) the space is available b) the second solution mimics just having the page load with everything folded up (save quickly view impl'd traits, which you can't do at all) and c) the information would be visible no matter what part of the specific documentation are being viewed. This is less easy to mockup just by modifying the page but I think that get's the idea across.
I'd be happy to look into doing this if people agreed with me that it would be valuable.
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